A typical Digital Distributed Antenna System (DDAS) in the art today operate in the downlink direction by providing a point-to-multipoint digital transport for delivering one or more digitized RF signals from a centralized host to a plurality of remotely located antenna units, each of which broadcast the digitized RF signals as an over-the-air analog RF signal. Each digitized RF signal carries data samples of a modulated electromagnetic radio-frequency waveform. Each of the remote antenna units in the DDAS receive the same stream of digitized RF signals and each produces a corresponding analog modulated RF waveform version of the digitized RF signals, and broadcast that waveform as an over-the-air RF signal.
A DDAS permits the over-the-air RF signal to cover a much larger and geographically tailored region because each of the remote antenna units (RAUs) of the DDAS can be specifically located to reach areas where service is desired. For example, a one RAU of a DDAS can be placed to cover an outside commons area of a campus while another RAU of the DDAS can be placed within an auditorium on campus because that auditorium's structure interferes with reception of signals from the outside. However, with the advent and continued development of Long-Term Evolution (LTE) and other cellular protocols, the modulation of cellular carrier signals continues to become increasingly complex as compared to legacy protocols, such as Edge and GSM for example.
For the reasons stated above and for other reasons stated below which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the specification, there is a need in the art for improved digital distributed antenna systems and methods for advanced cellular communication protocols.